Bereshit 5779: Equals in Eden

There is much to celebrate in the Torah’s first description not only of humanity but of gender. In Genesis 1:27-28 God creates the first person(s), male and female, in the divine image, and blesses them with the gifts of fertility and dominion. There may be a hint of non-binary gender here; there is more than a hint of original equality. But Chapters 2 and 3 tell a different story—how man gained primacy over woman, how Eve’s disobedience brought curses upon humanity. Chapter 1 seems so much more palatable in its depiction of gender, dare we say, even egalitarian? They—plural—are created together, they are blessed together, they are commanded together, and they are empowered together. What happened to them?

Rabbi/Dr. Amy Kalmanofsky writes about the transition from an initial stage of gender equality or even interchangeability to one of clear hierarchy in Chapter 1 of her book, Gender Play in the Hebrew Bible: The ways the Bible challenges its gender norms. She notes that the Bible does not assume innate qualities of gender, but rather understands them to be constructed. Yet this does not diminish the significance of the hierarchy—quite to the contrary.

When Eve asserts her authority over Adam (the forbidden fruit story), she simultaneously challenges the authority of God. Dr. Kalmanofsky writes, “In response, God establishes the Bible’s normative gender hierarchy in which men socially and sexually rule over women. Eve and Adam’s story makes clear how the social hierarchy is connected intrinsically to the theological hierarchy.” As Dr. Kalmanofsky shows throughout this remarkable book, the Hebrew Bible’s stories of gender play explore the consequences of subverting these hierarchies as cautionary tales to protect the patriarchy and the theology that it mirrors/models.

When the rabbis read this material, they found hints of gender hierarchy even in Chapter 1. The same verse (28) that has God bless the couple and command them to procreate says that they should fill the world “and conquer her.” That is an odd verb, וְכִבְשֻׁ֑הָ, and it is spelled in a deficient state, without the vowel vov to indicate the plural. With a vov, the imperative would apply to both man and woman—you two, conquer the earth! Without it, the Rabbis infer, only man is commanded to be a conqueror.

It’s a problematic reading since the very next word reverts to the plural imperative— וּרְד֞וּ you [both] shall rule—but it allows the rabbis, or at least some of them, to find evidence for gender role differentiation. The man should conquer the earth. And, according to Midrash Bereshit Rabba, he should start by conquering his wife (reading, “let him conquer her—his wife”). This and what follows is quite ugly. The Midrash says that a man should control his wife—that she not go out unaccompanied—since that can lead to trouble as in the story of Dina. There you have it—men controlling women in the name of protecting them, but also to establish their primacy in the home and in the world.

There were, however, other options for reading this singular verb, even in rabbinic literature. A curious alternative reads it in light of the prior part of the verse—the command to procreate. In Mishnah Yevamot the primary voice states that men are commanded to procreate, but not women. The minority view says that they are equally commanded, noting the plural imperatives, “you [two] shall be fruitful and multiply,” in our verse. Of course, even today it isn’t possible for men to procreate without assistance from women, but the question relates to the command. Women, according to the majority, are not commanded to have children. Why not?

The most convincing explanation is the most obvious. Childbirth is dangerous for women. In antiquity there were high mortality rates for both mothers and children, and even in our advanced society maternal mortality in childbirth remains surprisingly high. How could women be commanded to risk their own lives? The problem with this nice-sounding explanation is that if men were commanded to procreate, and if the gender hierarchy put them in control of women’s bodies and sexuality, indeed instructed that they “conquer her,” then risks to women’s health would often be disregarded in light of a grander agenda (procreation then; stopping abortion today).

This is precisely the point of a remarkable story on the same page of Bavli Yevamot 65b. Yehudit is married to Rabbi Hiya—and she suffers terribly when bearing children. She disguises herself as a woman from town and poses to him a general question—are women commanded to procreate? He gives the majority opinion answer, “no,” and she promptly drinks a sterilizing potion. He finds out that it is her and bemoans the situation saying, “If only you could have borne me one more belly full.” Implicit is that had he known it was his wife, he wouldn’t have given an honest answer. Explicit is that he sees her as a vessel for his fertility, and is indifferent to her suffering. As Dena Davis writes in a 1991 article, Yehudit “had to resort to a ruse to get a just interpretation of halakha.” Nevertheless, the halakha followed Yehudit, as seen in Rabbi Shlomo Luria’s Yam Shel Shlomo (Yevamot 6, #44).

Rabbi Mychal Springer challenges us to consider the role that such stories about gender hierarchy and sexual violence play in rabbinic literature. Are they cautionary tales designed to buttress the patriarchy, as Dr. Kalmanofsky reads the Bible’s stories of gender play? Or can we say that the Sages are holding up a lens on the society they inhabit, allowing us to interrogate its construction of gender, to notice the violent tendencies of this hierarchy, and eventually to subvert it? Our task is not to discover original intent—we can’t know why they shared what they shared. Rather, our challenge is one of interpretation. What type of society do we want to create?

We are constantly reminded that hierarchies do not dissolve without a fight. The creation of an egalitarian religious community calls for extended effort, resilience, self-critical reflection, and renewed effort. But the rewards of creating an egalitarian society can be great. After all, for a brief moment there in the garden, it was as equals that our ancestors received their first blessing.